5 Exciting Incentives Perfect For Drawing In New Audiences

Maybe once in a generation, a leading company will release a product that’s so disruptive, so innovative, so engaging, that it flies off the shelves (virtual or otherwise) through nothing but word-of-mouth marketing. Since you’ve clicked on this post, it’s safe to infer that you have no such product. If you want operational expansion, you’ll need to make it happen.

The key to growth is reaching new people — unsurprisingly, though, reaching a new audience isn’t easy. You ultimately need to accept that your product or service isn’t a priority for them. If you want their attention (and ultimately their custom), you’ll need to sweeten the deal significantly, and that means throwing in eye-catching incentives.

In this post, we’ll set out five great incentive types you can use to draw in new customers. Use some or all of them to give your business a major boost. Here they are:

Free samples

The word “free” has quasi-magical properties. It doesn’t matter if you don’t need something. It barely matters if you even want it. If you see that it’s available for free, you’ll inevitably feel a slight compulsion to take it (and then to reciprocate). The desire to initially take more value than you give — to essentially win your transactions — is remarkably powerful, and pushes people to negotiate heatedly. Why wouldn’t you want to take an effortless victory?

In truth, of course, free samples aren’t really free. When you give them out, the value you get in return is the attention the takers end up paying to your brand. If even a modest number of takers end up interested in buying from you, the operation will likely be strongly profitable. Just be sure to stay active in marketing to those people. Use their attention while you have it.

Prize draw entries

Sign up today and get a free entry to a prize draw! It might not sound like much, but it’s a powerful way to compel someone to provide their email address or telephone number, giving you a fresh promotional avenue. As for what prize draw you should go with, well, there are plenty of options out there. The easiest route is having a giveaway for one of your products.

If you think that isn’t right, there are countless alternatives. You could even offer tickets to online lotteries. Sites like playusalotteries.com make it easy to look through the latest jackpots and pick up tickets that you can pass on. The great thing about those is that they’re inexpensive to play but hold a lot of appeal given the exorbitant sums they tempt players with.

Branded merchandise

It’s relatively costly to send out free items of clothing, admittedly: product samples at least give people ideas of what they might purchase. So why would you bother? It’s a simple matter of ROI. Prospective customers who receive branded items of clothing don’t just spend more time thinking about the brand. They also wear those items and promote the brand in doing so.

Every time someone asks “What’s that hat about?”, you’ll receive a brand mention without needing to put in any extra work or investment. Sure, those mentions probably won’t lead directly to purchases, but they’ll steadily help you build a memorable brand — and being remembered is obviously extremely important given the value of a reputation.

Timed multibuy deals

Multibuy deals are highly effective throughout the retail world (pay particular attention to wholesalers like costco.com), and they work out well for everyone from a value perspective. Sellers get to offload more products, and buyers get better prices. Sure, the buyers often end up with more products than they actually need, but that’s for them to decide. No one forces them.

And if you combine multibuy deals with timed buys, you can strongly drive new prospects to put down their hard-earned money. They won’t want to miss out, of course — and any doubts they have about product quality will be dampened by the prospect of getting more for their money. The cheaper the item, the less need there is to be concerned about how good it’ll be.

Referral rewards

Let’s say that you’ve presented your product or service well enough to convince a prospective customer that it’s worthy of their consideration, but you haven’t earned a purchase yet. You’re in the awkward stage of needing them to take a leap of faith. How can you manage it? Though it may seem odd, one of the best things you can do is emphasize the referral rewards you offer.

Having good referral rewards doesn’t do anything to mitigate the risk your prospective customers face, naturally: if they’re dissatisfied with their buys, the best result is that you give them their money back, and they’ll still have wasted their time. What it does do is improve the positive side of the equation. If they’re happy with what they buy from you, they’ll have good reason to recommend it to their friends, and they’ll make money from doing so.